Study of estimation of helicopter navigation parameters with digital camera

Abstract

In this paper, digital navigation concept is introduced to the application of aircraft navigation parameter estimation firstly and an estimation method for navigation parameter using digital camera is presented, where navigation parameters represent the position and attitude information of a helicopter for autonomous navigation. The proposed method is composed of relative position estimation, absolute position estimation and integrated position estimation. Multi-image space orientation is introduced and real-time aerial scene (i.e., sequence image) matching is processed in relative position estimation. Digital image reference map and digital elevation reference map are employed and multisource matching is processed in absolute position estimation. Integrated position estimation is proposed to perform the estimation of helicopter navigation parameters. Computational simulation and experiment results show that our proposed navigation parameter estimation is feasible for helicopter navigation.